Like three of the four members of Talking Heads, Bobby Grossman had been studying at the Rhode Island School of Design before vamoosing down to the Big Apple to take part in the punk/no-wave creative revolution occurring in the mid-1970s. Grossman quickly became a familiar face at CBGBs and the Mudd Club. Grossman would make his mark in the realm of photography; he took lots of photos of famous people that are a useful resource to this day. 

Early on Grossman became friendly with André Leon Talley, who later become a big muckety-muck at Vogue (you might remember him from The September Issue), as well as Richard Bernstein, who over the years would execute almost a dozen covers for various Grace Jones releases and also did the familiar purple and yellow cover of New Order’s “Fine Time.”
 

Self-portrait by Bobby Grossman
 
According to Richard Boch’s The Mudd Club, Grossman was “the official TV Party photographer,” referencing Glenn O’Brien’s au courant anything-goes cable access TV show of the era. O’Brien also had Warhol connections; Warhol had included O’Brien, a graduate of Georgetown, as a part of his circle because he was looking to replace the speed addicts in his orbit with “clean-cut college kids.” In any case, Grossman was a familiar part of the vibrant NYC hijinks of the late 70s and beyond.

Warhol, whose most famous works had involved boxes of Brillo and cans of Campbell’s Soup, was certainly not unconscious of the iconic status of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes as well. While not as well-known as the Brillo boxes, each of these still fetches a pretty penny on the auction circuit:
 

 
Before arriving in New York and meeting Warhol himself, Grossman cribbed a page from the master and concocted a special punk rock version of an all-American box of Corn Flakes. As Grossman told Noah Becker about the project in 2009:
 

I photographed a number of friends eating Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. The idea originated at RISD when I took a Mick Rock photo of Lou Reed and put it on a box of German Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. Later on when I moved to NYC I did a series of Corn Flake photo sessions.

 
Grossman has said that the idea “originated in 1974 while listening to Sally Can’t Dance.”

I think the impact of putting a noted New York drug addict and chronicler of the city’s “underground” types on the cover of Wheaties, then and now reserved for only the most wholesomely successful of athletes (obviously the best-known such sportsman would much later become Caitlyn Jenner), is somewhat lost on us today. There’s a picture of Warhol himself holding one of Grossman’s Lou Reed Kellogg’s boxes, which you can see at the top of this post. Here’s a closer look:
 

 
The Kellogg’s Corn Flakes box in the 1970s featured the words “die originalen” in cursive script just underneath the name of the product, obviously signifying that this was not some ersatz imitation but the real McCoy just like Americans consumed with their morning orange juice. 

Then Grossman hit upon a related but different idea, which was to take pictures of prominent New York bohemians and rock stars doing a hokey pose while holding a bowl of Wheaties…

Keep reading after the jump…

Edward Woodward and Adam Ant on the cover of Ant News Today, 1985
 
The Equalizer was a crime drama starring Edward Woodward (The Wicker Man‘s Sgt. Howie) as Robert McCall, a secret agent turned private detective. Like the contemporary Miami Vice, The Equalizer brought in guest-star musicians to play the sinister jerks peopling its slough of rank criminality.

Also like Miami Vice, it was considered racy. Comparing the two series’ depiction of “raw, sometimes shocking underworld grit,” the LA Times reported in October 1985 that “several advertisers pulled their sponsorship of the [recent Equalizer] episode titled ‘The Lock Box,’ which starred Adam Ant as a purveyor of bizarre and forbidden sex.”

Many full episodes of this morally corrosive, sexually perverting entertainment are now playing on the world wide internet, and collected here are the ones with famous rockers. Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz (not yet 20!) plays the title role in “Mama’s Boy,” in which he gets mixed up with such drug dealers as Alex Winter’s Jeffrey. John Cale of the Velvet Underground wears his Songs for Drella ‘do in the role of “Aryan Leader” in “Race Traitors.” David Johansen of New York Dolls and Buster Poindexter fame and Stewart Copeland of the Police (writer of the series’ theme song) appear in “Re-Entry.” Though I haven’t watched Meat Loaf’s performance as Sugar Fly Simon in “Bump and Run,” I’m sure it’s some of his best work. And Adam Ant forces nice young women into prostitution in “The Lock Box.” (I haven’t been able to find the Quentin Crisp or John Cameron Mitchell episodes, but they must be on the DVD set.)

After the jump, watch John Cale’s, ah, “understated” performance as a neo-Nazi in the episode “Race Traitors”...

 
The New York Dolls essentially came to an end while touring Florida in 1975. A few months prior, the band was on their last legs when future Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren stepped into the picture. McLaren had some insane ideas, such as re-imagining the androgynous Dolls as tongue-in-check Maoists. Drummer Jerry Nolan later recalled McLaren’s vision of “dressing us up in matching red leather suits and playing in front of a giant communist flag. It was so stupid!”
 

New York Dolls: Better red than dead? (photo by Bob Gruen)
 
Nolan and guitarist Johnny Thunders quit the band and headed back to New York, forming the Heartbreakers. Their earliest gigs, with original bassist Richard Hell, were at the club that would eventually be known as the ground zero of punk: CBGB’s. As for the Dolls, vocalist David Johansen and guitarist Sylvain Sylvain recruited various musicians over the next couple of years, soldiering on until 1977 when they finally called it a day.
 

 
In the footage featured here, Johansen is seen conducting a mock-interview of sorts with Thunders in front of CBGB’s. Likely recorded in the fall of 1976, the two cover a lot of ground in the brief clip. Johansen asks about the Heartbreakers upcoming overseas tour, which turns out to be the ill-fated “Anarchy in the U.K.” tour with the Sex Pistols.
 

 
At the time, Thunders has no idea of the ultimate fate of the outing, in which nineteen shows are scheduled, though all but three are cancelled due to a backlash after the Pistols infamous appearance on Bill Grundy’s television program. Malcolm McLaren organized the tour, and when his name comes up the two have a few sardonic yucks aimed at their former manager (Thunders says he’s “the neatest”). They also talk about how the Heartbreakers might have to change their name, as there’s a new band making the rounds with a similar moniker: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
 

The Heartbreakers, with Richard Hell, at CBGB’s, 1975 (photo by Chris Stein)
 
The former band-mates are seen smoking and joking like the old friends they already were at that point. To be honest, I had no idea the pair were even on speaking terms during this period, so it’s nice to see them getting along so well (it’s worth noting that the reconstituted New York Dolls is one subject they don’t broach).

The encounter was shot with photographer Bob Gruen’s video camera and included on the New York Dolls DVD of Gruen footage, Lookin’ Fine On Television.
 

 

 
David Johansen, then at the height of his fame as Buster Poindexter, made a 1988 appearance on The Tonight Show and charmed the shit out of Johnny Carson and the audience.

Johansen was made for this kind of thing. Perfect timing, perfect delivery, a smooth operator. The Robert Goulet story is hilarious and Carson can’t help but burst out laughing even at the expense of one of his regular guests.
 

 
This is rather special - pages from John Holmstrom and Legs McNeil’s revolutionary Punk magazine, as held by The San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection and the Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.

These pages come from issue No. 6, which featured The Legend of Nick Detroit, a fumetti or photo-story written and directed by McNeil and edited by Holstrom, with Roberta Bayley as director of photography.

The fictional Nick Detroit was a “...former top international Agent and super-killer now become world-weary mercenary battling the infamous Nazi Dykes and their schemes for world domination.”  The strip starred Richard Hell as Nick Detroit, with David Johansen as Mob King Tony, and Debbie Harry as Debbie Nazi Dyke. There were also appearances by Lenny Kaye, David Byrne, and “a ton of others including Terry Ork, Anya Phillips, and Nancy Spungen (in a crowd scene).”

Check more details here and here.

Best of Punk Magazine is available here.
 

 
With thanks to Wendy! Via University Libraries Blog
 
More from ‘The Legend of Nick Detroit’, after the jump….
 

 
Keith Richards’ raunchy and thoroughly entertaining autobiography ‘Life’ is the best rock memoir I’ve read since Dylan’s ‘Chronicles’. Shambling and shameless, ‘Life’ stumbles along like an elegant drunk, feet in the gutter and head in the stars. Lock the doors and hide the children.

I came across this video from 1985 of Keith sitting in with David Johansen (Buster Poindexter) at NYC bar Tramps. For many years Tramps was my second home. Its owner Terry Dunne is a dear friend and former manager of my band The Nails. Back in the 80’s, Tramps was one of the hippest joints in Manhattan and arguably the best blues club in the country. Legends like Big Joe Turner, Lightening Hopkins and Esquerita played its hallowed stage. I played the Joker Poker machine, wired to the gills.

In this truly rare video, Delbert McClinton joins David and Keith. Joe Delia is on keyboards.

The person who uploaded this to Youtube goes by the moniker fxpope. I’m wondering if that’s the same F.X. Pope that directed new wave porn film Nightdreams and The Nails’ first video. Mr. Pope is also known by his birth name Francis Delia, Joe’s brother. Francis, is that you?